Twentieth Century Theatre

1
Twentieth Century Theatre the Theatre of the
Absurd
Photos in this lecture come from the film version
of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead
2
What are the essential qualities of theatre?

• It is live it is shared it is communal
• Each performance is unique, susceptible to change
  and therefore dangerous
• Unpredictable things could happen someone
  forgets a line, drops something, the lights go
  out, or something happens in the audience.
• It is the co-existence of the there and then and
  the here and now
• While in the audience, we perceive what is
  happening on the stage as the time period
  portrayed, yet we sit there in our time
  watching it all happen.

3
The aim of theatre theory practice in the
twentieth century

• Theatre has explored itself in relation to our in
  response to film and TV
• Are these media film TV theatre? They are
  the media through which most of us experience
  naturalistic, mimetic performance.
• The response is no theatre is not finished like
  a film or TV show. Even when TV is live, we are
  at home alone, not part of a group audience.
  Also, film and TV look more real there is much
  more pretend in theatre.
• Theatre in twentieth century isno longer a
  mainstream source of live entertainment and
  leisure
• Other live entertainments are more popular, such
  as concerts, sports, comics, etc

4
Directors and Actors

• Directors became important and had a great
  influence on the course of theatre in the 20th
  century.
• They often rewrote parts of scripts and
  completely reinterpreted a play into a different
  time period for example.
• Performers also asserted themselves as creative
  artists, not merely interpretative artists.
• Performers had a say in their roles and lines
  rather than just acting what was on a written
  page.

5
Realism vs. Symbolism Expressionism

• Realism
• popular as it mimics television and movies
• However, Playwrights felt they could do more with
  the field
• Symbolism and Expressionism
• more pronounced in theatre than in TV or film
• share the characteristics of dreams
• look to the common un-conscious of humankind
• Distortion, Fragmentation or blending of
  characters occurs
• Use of silence, repetition, consciously
  symbolic lighting effects.

6
Theatre of the Absurd

• A reaction to the disappearance of the religious
  dimension form contemporary life
• Authors felt that life is meaningless there is
  no hope of salvation thus their plays reflected
  these ideas.
• An attempt to restore the importance of myth and
  ritual to our age, by making man aware of the
  ultimate realities of his condition
• Not everything is scientific and can be figured
  out so plays showed illogic of life.
• Shows that language is unreliable
• There are so many clichés in language that it
  doesnt convey real human thought
• Language in plays can be purposefully confusing.
  As in Hamlet, language means something and
  sometimes nothing

7
Theatre of the Absurd

• Settings are very generalized and could be
  anywhere
• Identity is not fixed
• Often the characters forget who they are!
• Merging of the comic and tragic
• However frantically characters perform only
  underlines the fact that cannot do anything to
  change their existence